Sure, they could hit it, but as was quoted above, not effectively enough to really make a difference. Without a troop support doctrine then it would be difficult for them to actually provide any meaningful fire during the invasion itself.
IIRC, in the book, they say that the IJA and IJN did not conduct a joint training for the Midway assault. They didn’t have much experience with opposed landings so it would have been a steep learning curve.
Appendix 5 of Shattered Sword discusses the hypothetical of attempting a landing if the US had lost all three carriers, and the authors had concluded would be still be impossible.
Had the Japanese attempted to proceed in the historical situation, with the US having two carriers, the outcome for the Japanese would have been all that much worse.
The American carrier based dive bombers and fighters would have devastated the invasion forces as they attempted to disembark their landing craft. Invasions where the attackers had air superiority were difficult enough, where the defenders had that advantage would have been suicide.
One thing I have not seen answered is how long could the two carriers continue flight operations? They have limited aviation fuel and limited munitions. They had spent the last day tossing every plane they had into the air and lost a lot of planes doing it. Did they have fleet supply ships on hand? Certainly they could call for some but those would take time to get there.
I can’t imagine those carriers had a whole lot of fight left in them at that point.
They had enough to send strikes against Mogami and Mikuma on June 6th, and they patrolled every day up through June 9th. Losses among all the air groups were bad, but they had at least the equivalent of a full squadron of dive bombers left, which could have done some real damage to surface ships in bombardment mode. With fewer planes to supply and fuel, the number of sorties could be larger. A lot of aircrew had survived ditching, so operating tempos could be sustained by switching off pilots between sorties.
Also, Saratoga was on the way - it left Pearl Harbor on June 7th overloaded with extra planes to fly to Enterprise and Hornet. I’m not sure if it accompanied unrep ships, but with another flight deck and full avgas tanks/magazines, I’m pretty sure they could have given a putative Pearl Harbor invasion fleet some bad days.
Favorite fact about the Battle of Midway - all seven ships sunk were sunk by Japanese torpedoes. Yorktown and Hammann were sunk by I-168, the four IJN fleet carriers were scuttled by their attending destroyers, and Mikuma’s own torpedoes blew her up when they were set off by the US’s last strike on June 6th.
Well, let’s face it. The Mk 15 torpedo, brother to the infamous Mk 14 was a big bag of disappointment at the time and highly unlikely to sink anything even if fired as a point blank coup d’grâce especially since the Mk 6 exploder, common to both, worked dismally with a right angle strike.
Oh, and I should have said two squadrons of dive bombers. 31 took part in the strike against Mikuma, according to Wikipedia. With a strength of 18 aircraft per squadron the US was putting up almost two squadrons worth of SBDs even before Saratoga arrived.
You seem to have invented this idea that the US forces were completely beat at this point, rather than being able to continue operations, as was seen from the historical record.
It depends on the definition of “fight.” Were the Japanese to somehow magically have six more fresh carriers then the US would have been at a disadvantage, but why would they not have been able to completely disrupt an attempted landing?
The Japanese BB would most likely have been safe. The torpedo squads had been decimated (and had bad torpedoes) and destroying battleships by air was always difficult, but unarmored, floating troop transports? Sitting ducks for the dive bombers. The US still have plenty of fighters for strafing the landing craft, if any were to get launched.
From Wiki:
“The ship carried a total of 47 Wildcats, 45 Dauntlesses, five Devastators and 10 Avengers, including her own air group. Admiral Fletcher (whose flagship Yorktown had been sunk during the battle) came aboard on 8 June and made Saratoga his flagship.”
Even the IJN Battleships might have been under some non-trivial threat. The minute they approached Midway, their position would become known by default and their power of maneuver shrinks. Now, they might well be target-able from the air, however, once they make a move on Midway Island itself, it may well be a trivial matter of the USN to ambush or flank the attacking forces with destroyers, subs, and heavy cruisers.
It would be much better to face off BB to BB, but taking the strategic advantage offered and throwing everything they had would have been worth some risk, I think. Plus, Midway Island would add their own guns to the fight.
One of the more unappreciated aspects of the Pacific War was that in 1942, Japan had the better operating surface navy and it was a deadly year for the Allies as it took many surface battles around Guadalcanal for the US to start to learn naval warfare.
The Japanese fleet was huge! They were hoping for their decisive battle (艦隊決戦) at Midway and had brought everything but the kitchen sinks from the shore installations. They had anticipated that the US would respond with its Pacific Fleet so they were well prepared.
They had: First Fleet:
First Fleet Main Force
First Carrier Striking Force Second Fleet (Midway Invasion Fleet):
Second Fleet Main Body
Midway Occupation Force
Midway Support Force
All of which were conversing on Midway from various angles and at separate times.
By my count, the total number of warships
BB 7
CA 10
CL 4
DD 41
This does not count the Attu Invasion force with the following (and not breaking down that complex arrangement)
BB 4
CA 3
CL 5 (plus two auxiliary cruisers)
DD 21
Plus both Midway and Attu had auxiliary and other ships as well, plus there were a bunch of subs.
The US fleet has in the area:
BB 0
CA 5
CL 1
DD 9
These had to stay with the carriers outside of the range of the Japanese fleets so there weren’t really any cruisers or destroyers to spare. Besides, it would be have been suicidal to attack the Japanese fleet with cruisers and destroyers. The Japanese were much better prepared for a rumble and the US desperately wanted to avoid a surface engagement with an enemy that possessed those odds.
Revisiting this:
For the Midway based, artillery, it would have be difficult for the Japanese forces to knock out the four 7" big guns on the southern shores of Sand and Eastern Islands.
It’s easy to not appreciate the difficulty of naval bombardments of shore based heavy artillery. It’s easier to sink a ship than to actually knock out the gun itself. Later in the war, the US would bombard Japanese-held islands for a week or more, saturating the suspected areas and just hoping for a lucky hit. That was with the advantage of having the absolutely critical air support.
One of the great stories is how well the USN started learning its lessons during that war. Later in the war, it had complex doctrines for bombardments.
Here is an example of the detailed Iwo Jima gunfire support report, and compare it to what the Japanese had, which was essentially nothing.
According to Yamamoto’s plan, Kidō Butai’s aircraft were supposed to soften up the Pacific Fleet, not sink it; that honor was reserved for the Main Body under Yamamoto hisself. Also according to the plan, the USN would have its own battleships in attendance (either with the carriers or as an adjunct force), making the victory all the more decisive.
Something that tends to be overlooked is that even after three of his carriers were knocked out, Nagumo still sought a decisive surface battle. And this led, indirectly, to the loss of the Hiryu: apparently it never occurred to either Nagumo or Yamaguchi (CarDiv 2’s commander) to do anything but charge headlong northeast, at the American position; if the Hiryu had instead moved north or northwest it would almost certainly have been out of range of American search aircraft. But IJN tactical doctrine called for an attack with everything available, so that’s what they did — and lost the sole survivor of the world’s pre-eminent naval air force, not to mention one of its most promising admirals (Yamaguchi chose to go down with the ship).
By naval standards the Midway Island artillery was unimpressive. According to Wiki,
The atoll’s two main islands, Eastern Island and Sand Island, were both fortified by the Navy. Eastern Island, the smaller of the two islands, had three runways in a triangular configuration, and was defended by six coastal and dual-purpose batteries, armed with 3-, 5-, and 7-inch guns. Sand Island, one mile wide and two long, was completely developed by the Navy, but had no runways until after the war. At the time of the battle, Sand Island was defended by six batteries erected by the 6th Defense Battalion, and one by the 3d Defense Battalion. In clockwise order from the northwest corner of the island, these were: Battery C, two 5-inch guns; “naval” battery, two 3-inch guns; Battery F, four 3-inch guns; Battery A, two 5-inch guns; Battery D, four 3-inch guns; unnamed battery, two 7-inch guns; Battery A, two 5-inch guns; 3d Battalion Battery D, four 3-inch guns.[4]
So, discounting the 3-inch guns we have roughly the equivalent of three DDs and one CL – without the fire control the ships would have. I’ve not been able to find what their exact positions are, but I doubt they could all be brought to bear on the same target either.
The island’s artillary would have made for a bad day for the landing barges but the rest of the IJN would have had little to fear.
It’s called having a lockdown and a couple of kids home all day while having to do my teaching online. It’s only been two+ weeks and I’m already going crazy. I have no idea how all of you lasted for as long as you did.
1942 is a fascinating year in watching the development of naval doctrine as America was essentially starting from scratch. The early raids by carriers are interesting, but the Guadalcanal campaign was where the deficits really became apparent.
I agree that Midway’s guns would not likely play a part in a shootout between the two navies, if noting more than the IJN would move away from the atoll when attacked.
However, I don’t know if it can be said that they were not a threat to warships.
The bombardment of Cherbourg is an interesting study where Allied ships attempted to silence German guns, but failed to permanently knock them out.
Note the naval gunfire support doctrine by Normandy. In the bombardment of Cherbourg, this was the SOP:
This was an attack by Allied forces with 3 battleships, 2 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers and 11 destroyers against 20 casemated batteries.
It’s interesting because despite the tremendous firepower by the Allied ships, they were not able to destroy the German batteries themselves.
[quote]
While reports taken from German prisoners speak of the terror they experienced from the bombardment, there is no evidence that naval gun fire caused great destruction to the German guns. As a result of the non-destruction of the guns, infantry had to be used to capture them. Nevertheless, the naval gunfire was effective in neutralizing the German batteries, disabling 22 of their 24 assigned targets, and during the bombardment there were long periods during which German gun positions fell silent. This was later attributed to the demoralizing effect that they had on the German gunners, rather than a destructive effect on the guns. The fire support provided by the task force’s small ships proved to be more effective, and according to Allied reports after the bombardment this was the most effective aspect of the bombardment.
[quote]
Naval historian Samuel Morison has these thoughts:
Several Allied ships were hit, but no serious damage occurred, However, some of tha was luck.
I have not found any indication if the large guns on Midway were casemated or not, but they were certainly well protected with sandbags and such.
The threat to the warships was that they needed to come into range to attempt to destroy them, or else the batteries would simply prevent the landing because of the threats to the transports.
But again, with the US having air superiority, it’s inconceivable that the Japanese would have attempted an attack.
TokyoBayer, if you quote another Doper but edit his or her remarks, as you did mine, it’s expected that you’ll use ellipses to indicate any omissions. Thanks.
RickJay, as mod, has advised me that “The primary concern is ensuring the quoted poster’s words are not being presented in such a fashion as to deliberately misrepresent context.” I had understood, consistent with academic practice, that ellipses were to be used whenever anything was omitted from a previous Doper’s post. Now I know otherwise.
I will note that Discourse makes partial quoting so easy compared to vBulletin that many times folks quote a freestanding sentence or three out of a larger post with no leading or trailing ellipses.
Whereas if snipping multiple big hunks out of a quote, many / most folks will include an ellipsis whereever a hunk was removed in the middle of the quote.
I find myself falling into the habit of skipping leading and trailing elipses at least sometimes. Not that I think that’s good technique, but I do think it’s part of the evolving community standard.